Join singer/songwriter Hawksley Workman and music educators Rainbow Songs for the launch of Hawksley’s first book for children. Almost A Full Moon adapts one of Hawksley’s songs into a heartwarming tale of a warm welcome on a cold night, with evocative illustrations by Jensine Eckwall.

Brunch will be available for purchase starting at 11. Rainbow Songs will lead a singalong at 12:30, and Hawksley will play at 1:30. This will be followed by a book signing.

Co-presented by Pages Unbound and Another Story Bookshop. (PWYC proceeds go to Pages Unbound, a charitable non-profit Canadian organization. Pages Unbound’s mission is to explore how Canadian and international literary voices are developing and evolving and by bringing audiences and authors together in entertaining and illuminating ways.)

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15 years ago i hired a piano for my apartment in paris. i was fasting and I needed a distraction. the piano came up 2 flights of stairs and was awkwardly rolled into an open corner. desperate not to catch lusty whiffs of baguette, wine and cheese, i stayed in and wrote. this was in the strange and heady time of late september 2001 and in those days life and reality pulsed uneasily with an almost druggy undulation. i was raw and wanting to connect to things that were real and comforting. i thought of my grandma. she was still alive then, and i wanted her to understand the influence she had on me while i still had a chance. her joy. her fascination with life and her love of christmas. i had 8 days till the band was landing at CDG airport to begin another european tour, which were never ending back in those days. i wrote all day, every day. after 5 days i had an album’s worth of music celebrating my grandma, christmas, food, family, fire and singing. it’s still one of my favourites. i’m blessed that some of those songs have gone on to find an energy of their own, and have found listening ears and willing voices to sing, three generations, first snow of the year, almost a full moon and the libidinous claire fontaine, among others. these songs, like diary entries take me back to a time and place, but they also reflect a glow into the future. a willingness to define and redefine the simple loves and pleasures it sought to celebrate some 15 years earlier… i still get teary eyed singing “3 generations”. i still feel the petulant grind in my gut when sing “merry christmas (i love you)” and the yearning and subtle humour in reciting the list of ingredients for a winter soup in “almost a full moon”. this december, my faithful musical brother mr. lonely and i set out to play and sing and enjoy and share this music again. to celebrate community and connection. to give voice to the benign bits of joy that straggle behind the big glowing events. the days will be getting shorter, and in turn the nights longer. let us gather with nostrils full of fresh pine, browning onions and burning fires. i look forward to singing with you, joining voices to brighten back winter’s hunkering gloom. see you in december.

h.

TOUR DATES / On Sale Now:

12.05 – Winnipeg, MB @ West End Cultural Centre SOLD OUT
12.07 – Vancouver, BC @ St. James Hall (tickets)
12.08 – Edmonton, AB @ The Club at the Citadel Theatre SOLD OUT
12.09 – Edmonton, AB @ The Club at the Citadel Theatre SOLD OUT
12.10 – Edmonton, AB @ The Club at the Citadel Theatre SOLD OUT
12.11 – Edmonton, AB @ The Club at the Citadel Theatre SOLD OUT
12.13 – Fredericton, NB @ Wilmot United Church (tickets)
12.14 – Halifax, NS @ St. Matthew’s Church SOLD OUT
12.16 – Hamilton, ON @ Hamilton Public Library In The Round Series (tickets)
12.17 – Huntsville, ON @ Trinity United Church SOLD OUT

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We are very excited to announce Hawksley’s Almost a Full Moon Tour on the 15th anniversary of the release of his Christmas LP “Almost a Full Moon”. Tour dates are below, tickets go on sale this Friday August 19th.

VINYL RELEASE:

In celebration of this anniversary, we will also be releasing a limited edition vinyl pressing of Almost a Full Moon, which will include a special Lyrics and Chords “Songbook” of the original album tracks, as well as a free download card for the album, including the two bonus tracks “Watching The Fires” and “Silent Night”.

Hawksley is also officially announcing the release of a very special illustrated children’s book titled, Almost a Full Moon. Based on the lyrics of a song from the album of the same name, Almost a Full Moon is a warm-hearted tale of family, community, food and home and is illustrated by Jensine Eckwall, who helps bring beauty and a hint of magic to Workman’s evocative lyrics. The book will be published September 6, 2016 by Tundra Books (a division of Random House Canada). Pre-order is available here here.

*Edmonton: Beyond The Stage series passes available now, individual show tickets available Sept. 15, 2016.

i felt an initial unease with allowing myself to fully receive the warmth and gentleness of a perfect summer sunday. as if i were staying on guard for the surprise return of snow and cold. summer, when successful, is a capitulation. a handing over of the cautious and tentative self, with it’s habitually stiffened tip toeing. the body like an artist rendering. tired and hunched in charcoal. never bright. never lifted. but here i find myself in the tender caress of warm, fresh wind and evenings that take their time in turning. blue skies that linger into night skies to play host to what we’re told are a million distant suns. all this as the last bits of frozen ache leak away from the achilles tendons and out through the heals like an old fridge left to defrost. the deciduous limbs undulate and milkweeds gush. there’s latent and unseen growth of wild roses in the ditches even. there’s a new beauty lurking wherever you choose to set your gaze. and we begin to let go. even as we are now more sure footed, we are too, more imbued with a willingness to dream and to let our bodies and limbs and toes be revealed in a myriad of justifiable nakednesses. at the lake, life has made it’s rally too. and in the wood, the glow of fireflies at dusk. and the fox nonchalantly crosses the road with it’s tail in the air. to speak of this all being temporary is to waste time on a deeply understood truth. we know all of this is to be drunk in. sipped and gulped. savoured and sucked. a life made easy as a reward for winter’s suffering. this season’s charity will be siphoned like marrow from the bone. every last bead and drop. we’ll need this memory when we’re suffering the whip and lashing of winter again. this is our healing. this is when we breathe slow and deep again. this is when we submerge ourselves in ocean, lake and river and awaken that little genetic thread of the ancients. this is nature’s benevolence come with prayers of a most bountiful and robust rhythm. elemental and true. this is a truly worshipful moment. to give thanks for the sometimes forgot, but newly restored “connection”. the light. the water. the soil. the seed. the bud. the fruit. the olfactory eroticism of a jostled tomato plant. i wish you all a patiently savoured, relentlessly lovely summer.

Hawksley will be venturing out a few times this summer and fall with Mr. Lonely.

i’ve just recently returned from wellington, NZ after a week’s worth of ‘the god that comes’ shows at the very wonderful, new zealand festival. i hadn’t performed the play in just over a year, and was nervous of many things. would i remember all the words? would i remember the light blocking? but most of all, what would be the fuel to motivate a passionate performance? the play was written as a place to creatively park my fear and anger for all the mighty “kings” of this world who seek to destabilize human goodness through morbidly rehearsed messages of division and hate. over the last year, i’ve been seeking to change the way i respond to these reliably placed, emotional detonators. so the dress rehearsal day finally came, and i was feeling pretty nervous. dress rehearsal days are always fraught with a density of (sometimes) unnecessary self doubt. and it was on this dress rehearsal day we were invited to a p?whiri , a m?ori traditional welcome of song and words (meant to release the sacred), and a receiving line where hosts greet guests with a gentle, mutual touch of the nose, and inhalation to share closeness and breath. as the team arrived at the venue for the welcome, i was still mired in thoughts of energy for the show. if not hate and anger, what would i use to breathe some sort of gravity into this performance? we were prepped on protocols and were greeted with a ‘haka’ type dance. an extraordinarily moving and noble dance meant to welcome and give some artful, healthy alarm to the guests arriving. within minutes of the p?whiri , the room full of people were fighting back tears. the love and warmth combined with our fragile and frayed emotions from a long ways traveled had me weeping. it was clear, i hadn’t come to new zealand to try and muster up aggression or loathing. i had come to breathe in the love that was being so generously and freely given to me and the rest of the guests. all of a sudden, not only had my heart been redirected to it’s true purpose, but the entire ‘the god that comes’ team felt the enormous responsibility we now had to the festival for the stunning welcome and beautiful reminder of why we were there. we were there to share joy and pleasure. to share breath and warmth. to share our honesty and goodness. our week of shows went splendidly, and for all my worrying, words and songs were remembered and muscle memory came back to fill in any blanks the mind may have been nurturing. my time in wellington will be remembered as an emotional one. i wrote a lot. not songs. but correspondence and ideas for embracing love and acceptance in other parts of my life. i write to you today, from my little house in burk’s falls sick with a common cold. the fire burns as a winter storm seeks to have us forget that renewal and the green of life wait just around the corner. happy easter and happy spring. h.

A force to be reckoned with in Canada’s music landscape, Hawksley Workman blurs the lines between rock music, cabaret and theatre. Workman will collaborate with Art of Time to create a Songbook program (our tenth) like none we’ve done before.

The multi-instrumentalist and singer will dive into the discography of a musician who inspired Workman on his rise to the top of the Canadian pop music scene; Bruce Cockburn.

About Art of Time Ensemble:

Led by Artistic Director Andrew Burashko, Art of Time Ensemble transforms the way you experience music. Fusing high art and popular culture in concerts that juxtapose the best of each genre, Art of Time entertains as it enlightens, revealing the universal qualities that lie at the heart of all great music.

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